


And Let it Light and Fire

by windyLindy



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, HG Wells wrote so much more stuff than I realized, Post-Canon Fix-It, Silly artifacts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3569957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windyLindy/pseuds/windyLindy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But that other world, in spite of her resolute exclusion of it, was always looking around corners and peeping through chinks and crannies, (...) it invaded her dreams, and wrote broken and enigmatical sentences upon the passage walls of her mind. She was aware of it now as if it were a voice shouting outside a house, shouting passionate verities in a hot sunlight, a voice that cries while people talk insincerely in a darkened room and pretend not to hear." -H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica: A Modern Romance</p>
<p>HG had thought that she had made a solid life for herself beyond the Warehouse. However, a birthday present of one of her own old books and the reappearance of an artifact that she had once bagged draw her back towards the world- and the woman- she had left behind.</p>
<p>Because the woman who wrote Ann Veronica: A Modern Romance could never have left the Warehouse. Not really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Art of Ignoring

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the wake of reading through some of HG Well's lesser known works on a long vacation. All the books and writings of Wells' mentioned here can be found on Project Gutenberg: they have almost a hundred pieces by HG Wells. If you ship Myka/HG, Ann Veronica: A Modern Romance is a mandatory read.

"The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every well bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge." –H.G. Wells, _Ann Veronica: A Modern Romance_

In my defense, I did not recognize that rebuying my own books was as extensive and inextricable a rabbit hole as it was before I had proceeded too far down the path to escape again. I had acquired several of my own books unconsciously as Emily Lake, clean-covered paperbacks of _The Time Traveller_ and _The War of the Worlds_. The pair became a collection when, on the search for Francesco Borgia’s dagger, I lingered a touch too long in an old bookstore, running a finger along the faded cloth spines of books I had once perused as a girl. And then a name froze me: my own, my brother’s, emblazoned in gold beside the title, _The Sea Lady_. Delicately I teased it from the shelf and eased it open, remembering the words I had written with a shock of pride. It was something of me, that had survived into this new world.

“How much is this book?” I asked the shopkeeper. He named a price, less than I would have expected for a book of its age. I paid eagerly, and read and reread it on my remaining weeks on the road, taking courage from the memories of my seaside escapades in search of the Mermaid's Tail as a young agent. 

Three books are a collection, and collections achieve lives of their own, collections of books especially so. By the time Nate and I quarreled our way into separation (“it’s like you’re a different woman than I first met,” he had said, and I certainly could not deny the charge), I had a considerable cardboard box’s worth of battered old hardbacks, crinkled magazines and paperbacks, and sleek new copies with forewords by a dozen authors who had been born since I was bronzed. They found their way onto a new shelf in my small apartment, where I or a lover would from time to time take one down from its place and peruse the pages, reading one another stories as we curled in one another’s arms. Then, upon my birthday, I received three more books of my own.

The first came from my girlfriend Giselle, a copy of _Twelve Stories and a Dream_ bound in green leather that I unwrapped in the cramped Thai restaurant down the street from the police station where I worked. Giselle, a cheerful dark-haired chemist who I had met at a bar a week or so after leaving Nate, waved her hands with her usual excitement as I opened it. I thanked her, kissed her, and we left the restaurant for my small house.

Two rectangular packages of bookish dimensions waited on my doorstep as we returned. I released Giselle’s arm to examine them, a neat stack with the heft of dense paper. The first package, sealed with lime green duct tape,  was addressed in Pete’s customarily inelegant scrawl. The second came from Myka, brown papered and lettered in her precise hand. I turned Myka’s package over in my hands, but it told me nothing. Every crease in the paper was impeccably crisp, the corners perked sharply, the paper bearing only an address and a return at Leena’s Bed and Breakfast. It was as cheerfully and professionally blank as the hug Myka had given me the day the Warehouse began to move. I ran a finger along it, hesitating a second as I remembered the competent woman who had first glared at me as I retrieved my possessions in my former home. Giselle hooked a chin over my shoulder, looking at it curiously.

“Presents?” she asked, her head bobbing against my shoulder as she spoke.

“Yes, from two old coworkers.” My voice was proudly steady. I moved away from her and opened the door, stepping in. She shifted her balance at the sudden movement, but followed.

“Oh, let’s open them!” she suggested. “Unless this is another one of your hush-hush secret past things?”

I shook my head. “I’m not certain.”

“Then open it!”

I sighed and acquiesced, examining the package from Myka more closely as I placed Pete’s on the table. I ran a finger along it, hesitating a second as I remembered the competent woman who had first glared at me as I retrieved my possessions in my former home. Finally, I decided there were no further clues in the wrapping and pulled it away, revealing a green leather bound edition of _The Door in the Wall and Other Stories_.

A note did not fall out: it had been packaged too neatly to fall.

 

_Dear Helena,_

_My parents got this in their store and passed it on to me. I thought you might like to have it. I thought it was a great collection of stories. We recatalogued King Charles’ Gate, which I suspect you wrote about in the first story, last week._

_If you have the time, please write back. The Warehouse keeps us busy as always, but I do miss you._

_Happy birthday,_

_Myka_

 

And then the package from Pete. This one’s note, hardly as neat as Myka’s, pounced to the floor:

 

_Myka bought this one too, but chickened out on sending it to you. She’s going to kill me when she finds out I sent it anyway. Books like these aren’t really my thing, but Mykes really liked it. Like, has read this three times that I’ve seen levels of liked it._

_So happy birthday! Hope you can make it to my funeral._

_-Pete_

I examined the book, tucking the notes away. The cover was plain, with a small silver design in the center. I flipped it open to read the title page.

“Oh God,” I muttered with horror. “Oh god, Myka read this.”

“Did something bad happen to one of your friends?” Giselle asked.

“No. No, no, everything’s absolutely fine.”

Giselle craned her head to look at the title page of the open book. “If you say so. Another HG Wells, huh? I haven’t heard of this one before. I mean, who would guess that the father of science fiction would have written—“

“A romance,” I said. “A somewhat naïve, flowery, satirically intended romance. _Ann Veronica, A Modern Love Story._ H- His foray into the modern and out of the realm of fantasy. Or into a different one, depending on your view. It’s a story about a very clever young woman, fascinated by the sciences, who chooses adventure and passion over the safe suitor.”

“So you’ve read it already?” Giselle shook her head playfully. “How long have you had this HG Wells addiction?”

“A while,” I replied, then flipped the book onto its table and changed the subject. After Giselle once again clothed herself and left with a final kiss for her own home, I shoved the book into the back of the shelf dedicated to my works.

The next day, I wrote two careful thank you notes:

 

_Dearest Myka,_

_Thank you for the book. It is good to hear from an old friend, and good to see a literary friend from my youth._

_Dear Pete,_

_I shall pretend this never occurred if you do._

On the second day, _Ann Veronica_ still seemed to flicker at the edges of my mind despite its remote placement. Ann’s battle with her conservative father raged through my head as I fried my morning eggs. I marched to my work with Ann and her fellow feminist protesters marching to jail beside me. The men I sat beside on the bus flickered between Ann’s stolid gentleman suitor and the inappropriate but wonderful chemist from her lab. I turned corners and wandered into my own past. _Ann Veronica_ had been the autobiography of my years before I reached the Warehouse, struggling to carve myself a place in the world of science and falling for all sorts of inappropriate lovers, and it felt again as in the first week after my debronzing when I imagined I might stride into one of them whenever I rounded a corner.

On the third sleepless night, I dropped the book into one of the silver bags I had borrowed from the Warehouse. Completely and utterly nothing happened. I was undecided whether to be disappointed.

The fourth morning, I woke up, came to, and stared vacantly at the wall separating me from the bookshelf of my old works, the bookshelf of _Ann Veronica._ “Sod it,” I muttered, rising from the bed and careful not to dislodge Giselle from her sleep. She twisted unconsciously into the warm hollow I had left in the bed. Before taking the book, I paused for a second with my hand along its ridged spine. I imagined it a vicious beast, ready to lunge upon the memories of my past most incompatible with my current life and drag them to shatter the tranquility of my home and my bond with Giselle. _But the memories are still mine,_ I thought. _It’s a poor life that can’t survive a single taste of remembrance._ I pulled the book off the shelf and settled into the couch with a decisive flop.

I did not get up again for hours. I fought beside Ann Veronica, beside my younger self, for freedom from my father and the right to a college education. I met a mentor and became disillusioned, I found my place in the sciences, I fell in love, others fell in love with me, the layers of twists that had led me slowly but inexorably towards the Warehouse. I was Ann Veronica who was my younger self and I cheered for us, again and again. Some of the quotes I mouthed to myself.

“She wanted to live. She was inherently impatient – she did not know for what – to do, to be, to experience.”

"I want to be a human being; I want to learn about things and know about things, and not to be protected as something too precious for life, cooped up in one narrow little corner."

"All the best novels have been written by women, and yet see how men sneer at the lady novelist still!"

"They seemed the most wrappered things in all Ann Veronica's wrappered world.”

"I'm not gentle. Certainly not a gentlewoman."

I laughed, I did not quite cry, and then when I reached the section about Ann Veronica’s gentleman suitor: _It would be the wrappered world almost at its best. She saw herself building up a life upon it – a life restrained, kindly, beautiful, a little pathetic and altogether dignified._ I read it again and flipped the book closed. Giselle looked up from where she was reading her own book, surprised. “You put a book down before finishing it, honey? That’ll never happen again.”

“Just a pause,” I responded. “It’s a good spot in the tale to settle. Where it should have ended, perhaps. I’ll finish the rest later, maybe.”

As I curled alone in my bed that night, I tried to remember the words _restrained, beautiful_ , and _kindly_ , but ultimately _pathetic_ followed me into my dreams.

The fifth day, I moved through my routine like an automaton, neat and crisp. My younger self’s voice echoed clear and questioning in my head. “Am I becoming reasonable or am I being tamed?" she asked. I drowned her in words and laughter with Giselle, deliberately laughing louder at every joke she made. At work I was relieved with how fully I settled into the examinations of my cases, and I dug into them with alacrity. After two hours of poring over files of evidence, I realized with a jolt that I had been searching for an Artifact’s traces, and I slammed the files back into their cases unusually hard.

The sixth day, I dialed a number that, however rarely I’d called it, had tapped its way into the memory of my fingers.

“So you finally called. What crisis are you in now?”

“Ah, Artie. No, nothing of the kind. I don’t suppose you have any other spare work? A quick jaunt with the Warehouse?”

“Nothing for a freelancer, too quiet recently, though that never lasts. I’ll call you if we need you.”

“I understand, certainly.”

“Good. And call Myka, will you?”

He hung up the phone before I could answer. I looked at the phone for a second before returning it to the receiver, unsure whether I was relieved or disappointed.


	2. Unestablished Things

"Men and women are not established things; they are experiments, all of them. Every human being is a new thing, exists to do new things. Find the thing you want to do most intensely, make sure that's it, and live it with all your might." HG Wells,  _Ann Veronica: A Modern Romance_

There are 17 ways to build levitating devices using common household items including paperclips, five drops of bleach, and a dismembered iPod.

It takes approximately 128 games for a clockwork chess master to learn to play the game well enough to stalemate with the expert setting on a laptop chess game.

And the average sparrow has 4 hours of sane sentience after exposure to my intelligence serum before it composes its first opera, and another 2.5 hours before it writes its first Communist propaganda song.

This is what, two weeks after my birthday, I informed Giselle that I had been doing with my free time since I had seen her last. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Honey, your work is amazing, but even science really is not an adequate reason to give up eating, sleeping, and remembering to buy a bottle of wine for movie night. This isn’t healthy.”

“What could be better for one’s health than science?” I retorted.

“Not when that’s all you’ve done for half a month!”

“Untrue. I have also read things.” _Ann Veronica_ five times from front to back, deliberately not wondering what Myka had thought of it, but I deemed that irrelevant to the discussion.

Giselle sighed, frustrated. “Sweetheart, you make gorgeous stuff, but I just can’t deal with this. It's not just unhealthy for you, it's miserable for me. I mean, sure, ever since you’ve been dating there have been times when you drop out of the real world for a few days and then come out with a, a tapdancing mouse or something, but two weeks?”

“I am in the real world! Simply feeling a touch out of place.”

She leaned in suddenly and kissed me. I hesitated and kissed back, and we leaned together, her hands rising to twine in my hair as one of mine moved lightly along her back. Her chapstick tasted of caramel apples, a flavor round and full and achingly homelike as it teased at the corners of my mouth. She bit my lip once and then pulled back, hands moving to my shoulders.

Giselle said softly, “This is the real world. This is your place. You, and me, and this. Not whatever you’ve been worrying about.”

“Mmm,” I hummed in my throat, a modern sound I had learned in my last four years that could mean agreement, or understanding, or doubt, or all three at once.

“Come to bed,” Giselle murmured, taking it as agreement. “I’ve missed you.”

I looked towards the bedroom door then hesitated. “Perhaps we should take this to your apartment? My bed is presently occupied by an increasingly militant colony of sentient rabbits.”

I do not quite know how one conveys exasperation in a kiss, but Giselle managed it rather well as she dragged me towards the door.

 

The next week I walked into my room “See here, I did everything you asked,” I argued into the cell phone. “I came on time, I met your friends, and- look, she started off on the whole tangent- no, of course I don’t think- Won’t you just let me- honestly, let’s drop this whole thing and talk again when we’re calmer, shall we? Fine.” I flipped the phone decisively shut then went to make myself a gin and tonic before settling onto the couch with a sigh. “What on earth am I doing with my life?” I said to the air.

“Not entirely sure, but the next thing you’re going to do is run a job for the Warehouse,” a voice said behind me, calm and amused.

I whirled around, pulling back into a fighting stance, and then my eyes widened.

“Claudia, what in hell’s name are you doing here?”

She leaned in my doorway, inspecting Levitation Device Number 12 where it revolved in the air near my office. The central umbrella puffed up when she poked it.

“At the moment, checking out your inventions. You’ve been busy, Miss Victorian! Or really, really bored.”

“Well, I am pleased to see you too,” I said, recovering my composure. “Though I have found that social calls rarely involve breaking and entering.”

Claudia raised her eyebrows. “Really, now?”

“Well, only when the occasion calls for it. Care to explain why now?”

Claudia turned away and began examining my bookshelf.

“I’m only partially here for social stuff,” she explained. “Really, I’m here on caretaker business. How’d you like my entrance?”

“It was rather surprising.”

The hacker cum trainee caretaker grinned. “That’s the goal! According to Mrs. Frederick, being able to slightly terrify agents is an important part of the gig.”

“Another part that I have observed is the ability to inform agents, in whatever obscure riddles chosen, to inform agents what exactly they are needed to do.”

“Of course.” She stopped fiddling with the umbrella and crossed the room to sprawl on my couch. “So, one of the old artifacts from Warehouse 12 is back, and I’m here to recruit you for round two.”

I froze with all the instinct of a hunting dog spotting a bird’s rustle (I have never been terribly clear on how those animals work, and I still see no need to change that in a world with such brilliant robotics). “Oh? Which one?”

“What place would be more accurate. It’s Aldington Knoll, back in jolly old mother England.” She waved a file in my general direction. I took it from her and began leafing through copies of my old paper reports as well as her newer typed pieces.

“Aldington Knoll? Are Myka and Pete that busy? Spritzing the old shield in the knoll is more janitorial work than agent work.”

“Hey, read the whole file before you get picky. There’s something a little funny going on this time.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” I read through it some more, looking for something more interesting than the shield, an artifact that caused anyone considering theft or damage of an object nearby to instead passionately protect it. Its effects make it effectively impossible to move, too difficult in my time even when neutralized. I frowned when I reached the most recent news article.

“Yep,” Claudia confirmed, “That’s where it gets weird. Some kids break in, try to dig into the mound- then poof, their friend gets a vid of them disappearing into thin air, and ping, we’re on the case.”

“A mystery, then,” I said. “When do I start?”

“Check the plane ticket.”

I flipped through the papers. “Ah, tomorrow morning. Not a problem, it isn’t as though I have a relationship to attempt to fix or anything of that nature.”

“Yep! Call if you need anything.”

Claudia opened the door to leave. I opened my mouth to ask, then hesitated. Claudia glanced back and grinned.

“Don’t worry: Myka will be there too.”

I tossed back the rest of the gin and tonic.

 

Through the labyrinth of airport security, I kept myself amused and sane by navigating a grappling gun, a pistol, and two knives through the process unseen. Moderately satisfied with myself, I settled into the New York airport’s bench and flipped out my electronic book. Feet clicked by me on the way to their gates, and lost in my book, I did not notice when one paused in front of me.

“Helena?” the passerby asked.

I took no time to recognize her, but several seconds to believe it. Over the last several months, I had carefully trained myself to stop looking, reminded myself that not every woman with curly hair and an excellent backside was named Myka Bering. Identifying her now required slamming those circuits in the opposite direction. As my mind skidded in to a halt, throwing sparks like the brakes of a train, I managed a brilliant retort.

“Ah, Myka.” It is not for nothing that I am the greatest literary mind of my age (if one counts my years bronzed).

She looked me over quickly, dumbfounded. “What are you doing- I mean, I knew we were meeting you in England, but I didn’t realize-“

“I understand, it is quite unexpected. But not at all unpleasant. You are also on the 11 o’clock?”

Myka smiled at me, her disbelief transfiguring into a grin.

“Hey, HG!” came a voice from behind, fraternity boy familiarity. “Could you kick in your bags a bit?”

I nudged the offending article under my seat and raised an eyebrow at Pete. He flopped down in the seat next to me, handing me a bag of pretzels, a couple burritos, and some nachos painted in cheese a color that I normally associated with overexcited painters in modern galleries.

“Got us a few snacks for the road,” he announced. I raised an eyebrow.

“Burger King? Honestly?”

“He has absolutely no taste,” Myka informed me. “I would say you get used to it, but I almost do and then he manages something new.”

“I don’t have to share,” he huffed, arranging the boxes and bags in his duffle. I handed him all except one of the pretzels, which Myka took from me. She offered me one cinnamon-encrusted piece of the doughy creation.

“I believe you lack the determination to keep what prizes hide themselves among this culinary rubble safe for the full seven hours of this flight,” I informed him. He stuck his tongue out at me and made a noise characteristic of rude schoolchildren before settling into his seat and pulling out a comic book.

“I’m going to get some real reading done before the flight,” he said. “You guys can talk about… whatever it is you two talk about. Books? Old things? Books about old things?”

 “Not inaccurate. But Myka, tell me about the Warehouse. How is everyone?”

“Oh, fine. Claudia’s turning into Mrs. Fredericks and loving it, and Steve met a pretty handsome man on the job.”

“He had an artifact?”

“A possessed Tiffany lamp. After that, their relationship could really only go uphill.”

I chuckled. “Wonderful. And have you read anything interesting lately?”

 “Um, yeah, but- oh, look, I think our flight’s boarding, um, I’ll check the board.” Bright red, she dashed off.

I watched her go with a raised eyebrow. That question had been the staple of our relationship: what could she have- Ah. My second birthday present. I waited a second, processing. Had she felt that awkward about it? Or perhaps I was overthinking it and she had just read that abysmal _50 Shades of Grey_. I shook my head, then shouldered my bag to join her on the flight, Pete tagging at my heels.

 

Unfortunately, my seat had been placed some distance apart from Pete’s and Myka’s on the plane. Fortunately, I was in possession of a government badge and a determined attitude, a combination adequate to manage a change in seat. I settled down beside her, and swallowed a hint of disappointment as she pulled down the seat arm between us.

By the time the plane was in the sky, Pete was leaning unconscious against the window. I closed my book and glanced over at Myka, who was scribbling something in a notebook. “Pete is quite the sound sleeper.”

She glanced over and smiled, the quiet curve of her lips sneaking slowly into a familiar position. (I resolved to spend less time focusing on her lips despite anticipating a rather low rate of success at the effort.)

“That’s my partner, all right,” she said fondly. “I swear he spends half his life asleep.”  _Partner._ I winced internally, then stuffed the emotion into an imaginary smooth black sphere.

“I’m glad to see the two of you doing so well,” I commented. Myka snorted.

“We make things work, even if things get a little… Warehouse-ish sometimes. I don’t know what he’d do if I wasn’t looking out for him.”

“A lucky man,” I commented. I paused for a second, searching for a conversational redirection. “Ah, and by the way, I recently made a foray into the works of Robert Heinlein. I don’t suppose you’re familiar with-“

She pounced eagerly on the conversation, and for the rest of the flight we settled into the comfortable world of literature that was not my own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point I may need to write some short fic with mostly Claudia and Pete, because I really love writing those two and they make seriously adorable pseudo-siblings. Anyways, the next chapter will involve the beginning of the artifact-related chaos!

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written much fan fiction, so please provide critiques or suggestions. Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed the read! I'll put out the next chapter by the end of April at the latest.


End file.
